"Dad!"

"Sparking?  Hold on a minute..." he puts down the phone before I can say anything else. 

I hear him shuffling his cell phone and going back to the phone in the office.  The wailing of the other lines ringing goes off in my ear; their sounds are like alarms telling me life is still going on while I am beginning to melt into a tunnel-vision retrospective of my life.  I am violently searching my mind for any signs I could be wrong.  Nothing.

"Uh...hi.  Can I call you back?" he asks nonchalantly, which was telling considering we hadn't spoke in almost two years.

"Fuck no!  We're going to talk now mother-fucker!"

(Pregnant pause.)

I hear him go back to the other line and tell the person he'll call them back.

"What do you want?" he asks with an annoyed tone.

"The truth mother-fucker!"

"What are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about.  You know exactly what I'm talking about!  This is your one chance to tell me the truth."

(Pregnant pause.)

He doesn't reply.  The air becomes electric around me.  Rage courses through my body as if it was oxygen fueling my every breath.

"I know it was you.  Now, you have one final chance to tell me what happened before I come over there and blow your fucking head off!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he says with measurable yet cool disdain.

"The fuck you don't!  The fuck you don't know!  Last chance."

I can barely hold the phone as I try locking the door to my apartment with no luck.  I leave it unlocked.

I am walking to my car to drive to the house of the one friend who picked up her phone at 4:50 in the afternoon. My therapist had me write out a list of people to call once I left her office.  She told me not to call my father; if she knew me at all after two years together she would have known this was an impossibility for me.  After I ran through the list, assuring myself I followed directions, it was a reflex to call him.

"I've got to get back to work Sparking.  If you want to call me back when you're calm-"

Cutting him off, "Now you'll know what it's like to feel hunted you mother-fucker!  Let's see how you like it!"  I scream this into the phone for him and the other couple getting into their car in my garage to hear.

"Sparking..."

"Last chance!"

"Are you on drugs?"

"I'll see you in hell mother-fucker!"

Click.

"It was him, Alex*!  It was my father!"  I am yelling into the phone at my husband.

"What?  What are you talking about honey?" he says with audible concern.

"He was my abuser.  It was him!"  I was yelling this into the phone while I stumbled around yet another parking garage - the hospital.

Half-way to my friend's house, I turned my car around and headed back toward the hospital I had visited in early summer when I was suicidal; four months had passed since then.  I had stayed on the phone with her since I had hung up with my father.  When I asked her if she had any guns, I realized I was serious about killing him. 

A sanity gene finally went off in my head and I pulled my bulky SUV off on the next ramp and turned back on the highway.  I continued telling her the story of what had happened at my therapist's office until I was back at the hospital.  

At one point, I was lost in the city because I had been so busy talking to her I forgot where to turn.  My left arm began feeling numb and slack.  She was concerned I was having a heart attack and was doing her best not to show any panic.  She guided me in.

"I'm at the hospital.  I feel like I am going to lose consciousness but I just want you to know where I am."

"Okay.  I'll be there as soon as I get Sunshine."

"No.  I don't want her to see me like this.  I'll call you."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes.  I've got to go.  I feel really light headed."

With that, I pushed through the double doors and saw the elevator I had to use to get down to the main floor.  Inside it, the woman who saw me realized I was beginning to have trouble.  Luckily, she worked there.  She offered help and I nodded as I felt the tears finally coming. 

Off the elevator, she rounded up a wheelchair and got me in it.  She took me to admitting.  The nurse leaned over and asked, "What are you here for?"

"I want to check myself in because if I don't, I am going to go kill my father."

She got up and immediately wheeled me into triage.  I didn't speak another word for several hours as my body began shutting down, one function at a time.

*****

"I still want to kill my father sometimes, Bruce.  It often feels like the only viable option."

"All thought is God, all feeling is God.  There is no God above you; there is no God below you.  You are a God here amongst the other Gods at play with each other."

This was a mantra I would come to know well.  On my third visit, my husband left us alone together.  I didn't have anything to lose; I told him the whole truth of what I was thinking and feeling.  It had been four months since I had checked myself into the hospital fearing I might kill my father.

"Are you saying it's okay to kill him?"

"Well that is entirely up to you.  What I am saying is it is okay to think about killing him.  It is okay to feel the rage that leads you to want to kill him."

I pondered this for a while as he moved his hands around my body's different meridian points.

No one had ever spoken to me like this before.  The doctors, nurses, family members, and counselors, had all weighed in with an opinion on what was appropriate behavior and what wasn't.  Bruce did none of that.  He let me be exactly who I was in the moment without judgment.

I felt unconditional love for the first time in my life.

His wise eyes stared back at me with a familiar sparkle that cleansed all my truth-telling inhibitions. 

He was love incarnate.

*****

Once I was transferred to another hospital's psyche ward by ambulance, and checked in by the on-call resident, I laid in my sterile bed looking out at the night sky.

I shook violently.  I prayed.  I asked for forgiveness for saying everything I had said to my father.  I couldn't sleep.

My brain raced through all the memories of my father at soccer games, taking me skiing, and coming home from work to check the mail.  

Was I going crazy?

The night nurse came in eventually to check on me.  She ordered another sleep medication from the pharmacy.  She sat with me and assured me that she would see to it that I was listed as a private patient so my father couldn't find me.  After threatening to kill him, I was now convinced he was coming after me.

It felt like he was everywhere.

Everything blended together:  feelings, conscious memories, and timelines.  Occasionally a rush of warmth would sweep over my body and render its functions useless.

The nurse sat and stroked my hand after giving me the second medication.

Finally sleep came.

*****

The day I realized my father was my primary abuser, I did not see one memory.  It was a knowing.  My entire body felt the memory of this truism.  I had recounted an image, one of many flashes which constantly came, which I had told my therapist about a hundred times.  Then, while attempting to distract her by changing the subject in order to prevent another question about it, my brain had finally decided it was done running.

I saw my little seven-year old body in the bathtub, with my father washing between my legs with the soap in hand and without a washcloth while I stood holding the molded handle .  I knew.  I finally knew my therapist wasn't lying to me when she said this wasn't appropriate behavior for a father. It was the first time I saw his face.

It was the face of a man who hid an evil, lurking desire, behind the facade of a normal life.

*****

That face still haunts me.

This is the second installment of an ongoing series.  The pieces will be written to stand alone and offer more to the reader if the entire series is read.  *I write under an avatar and all names have been changed to protect the innocent.  This is a true story, the story of my life.  Any changes made to it are minimal, based solely on my inability to remember the exact details.

Copyright © 2010 by Sparking.  All rights reserved.

Part I can be found here.

Part III can be found here.

Part IV can be found here.